House prices remain strong in the East of England even though they have slowed elsewhere.

Doug Crawford, CEO of My Home Move, commenting on today’s ONS house price index for May, said: “Today’s 4.7% annual house price growth for May shows that, despite the slight slowdown, the housing market is still simmering away nicely. Even though the overall growth rate has fallen, for first time buyers the slower rate of house price growth will be welcome, particularly with inflation running ahead of wages for many.

“However, the headline figure masks a lot of regional variation, with price growth particularly strong in the East of England (up 7.5% year on year) and the East Midlands (up 7.2%) but more sluggish in London (up 3.0%).

“There is a complicated cocktail of house price growth, inflation and wage growth that varies significantly through the regions, which means buyers are having very different experiences of the housing market depending on where they are buying.

“Our recent research found that average deposits climbed £6,000 in the last year, with increases in some regions of over 30%.”

Richard Snook, senior economist at PwC, said: “Today’s housing market data from the ONS and Land Registry shows a gradual slowdown of house price growth, in-line with our expectations that growth in 2017 will be around half that of 2016.

“House price inflation fell back to 4.7% in the year to May, from a downwardly revised 5.3% in April (initially reported as 5.6%), taking May’s average UK price to £220,700.

“Today’s figures are the first to be released since we published our latest housing market projections in the UK Economic Outlook.

“Our main scenario anticipates a softening of the market over the year with house price inflation falling from 7% in 2016 to 3.7% in 2017.

“We expect London to be one of the UK’s worst performing regions, achieving price growth of just 2.8% in 2017. The key drivers of this slowdown are uncertainty related to Brexit and a softening in the economic outlook.

“The latest regional data is showing the strongest performance in East Anglia.”